Consulting by RPM || Free Advice Blog

NYPD = Teachers’ Union + Guns

My column at Rare analyzes the police from a Public Choice perspective. “Reform” through conventional channels is not going to happen.

Now the NYPD officers involved in [the Abner Louima torture] case did get into serious trouble. In December 1999, Volpe was sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole. In March 2000 three other officers were convicted of conspiracy to thwart the federal investigation into the torture, while Charles Schwarz was convicted on June 27, 2000 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, for helping Volpe assault Louima in the bathroom.

Note the proximity of these convictions to the Puerto Rican Day attacks of June 11, 2000. Although no one obviously came out and said it officially, at the time various sources within the NYPD made comments to the effect that they were “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”—as if the public was being unreasonable for not wanting police to sodomize suspects in precinct bathrooms, but also to want police to stand up when a terrified young woman explained that a gang of men were roaming around Central Park assaulting other women.

I was running out of space and wanted to keep this “mainstream” for Rare, but in a future article (maybe just here at Free Advice) I’ll explain why it’s not a contradiction for Rothbardians to be upset about the State throwing pot smokers in jail, but then failing to punish cops for killing unarmed suspects.